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Cape Town - The State's application for leave to appeal
former Fidentia boss J Arthur Brown's sentence was denied by the Western Cape
High Court on Monday.

Judge Anton Veldhuizen listened to the State's arguments,
confirmed the defence was opposing the legal action, and then turned down the
application.

The State would now have to petition the Supreme Court of
Appeal if it intended appealing Brown's sentence, which it described as
"startlingly and inappropriately lenient".

Brown paid a R150 000 fine last month, which was his
sentence handed down by the high court for two fraud convictions.

Had he not paid the fine, he would have been imprisoned
for 36 months.

He was also sentenced to 18 months in jail on each count,
suspended for four years on condition he not be convicted for fraud again.

In April, he was convicted after admitting to
misrepresentations he made regarding investments entrusted to him by Mantadia
Asset Trust Company (Matco) and the Transport Education and Training Authority.

Matco, subsequently renamed the Living Hands Umbrella
Trust, was responsible for paying money from the mineworkers' provident fund to
the widows and orphans of workers killed in mine accidents.

His trial started in November 2012 and five State
witnesses presented evidence.

He handed up four admissions documents and then decided
to change his plea to guilty on the two main counts.

Misdirection

Jannie van Vuuren, for the State, argued during the leave
to appeal application that the court misdirected itself, and that he was sure
another court would impose a jail sentence.

He said the court erred in its finding that fraud without
actual monetary loss did not fall within the minimum sentence provisions.

Had it fallen within these provisions, Brown would have
faced a possible 15 years in jail.

Van Vuuren also argued that the court had erred by basing
the sentence on the "narrow" description of offences in Brown's
admissions document while "completely ignoring" the evidence already
on record.

He said the court had disregarded the evidence given by
State witnesses regarding the fraud counts and sentence, without giving any
reason to do so.

It had also erred in limiting the State's effort to
cross-examine Brown during his testimony in mitigation of sentence, he said.

Van Vuuren said the court had no good reason to find that
the State had mismanaged the case.

"The case was not mismanaged. Inasmuch as the court
found to the contrary, the court's conclusion is coloured by the misdirections
that reasonably fall to be corrected by another court," he said.

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